“If we do, it’s because only the idle men have the time to amuse us,” retorted Miss Keene.  “But,” she added, with a laugh, “I suppose I’m getting nervous and fidgety myself; for I find myself every now and then watching the officers and men, and listening to the orders as if something were going to happen again.  I never felt so before; I never used to have the least concern in what you call ’the working of the ship,’ and now”—­her voice, which had been half playful, half pettish, suddenly became grave,—­“and now—­look at the mate and those men forward.  There certainly is something going on, or is going to happen.  What are they looking at?”

The mate had clambered halfway up the main ratlines, and was looking earnestly to windward.  Two or three of the crew on the forecastle were gazing in the same direction.  The group of cabin-passengers on the quarterdeck, following their eyes, saw what appeared to be another low shore on the opposite bow.

“Why, there’s another coast there!” said Mrs. Markham.

“It’s a fog-bank,” said Senor Perkins gravely.  He quickly crossed the deck, exchanged a few words with the officer, and returned.  Miss Keene, who had felt a sense of relief, nevertheless questioned his face as he again stood beside her.  But he had recovered his beaming cheerfulness.  “It’s nothing to alarm you,” he said, answering her glance, “but it may mean delay if we can’t get out of it.  You don’t mind that, I know.”

“No,” replied the young girl, smiling.  “Besides, it would be a new experience.  We’ve had winds and calms—­we only want fog now to complete our adventures.  Unless it’s going to make everybody cross,” she continued, with a mischievous glance at Brace.

“You’ll find it won’t improve the temper of the officers,” said Crosby, who had joined the group.  “There’s nothing sailors hate more than a fog.  They can go to sleep in a hurricane between the rolls of a ship, but a fog keeps them awake.  It’s the one thing they can’t shirk.  There’s the skipper tumbled up, too!  The old man looks wrathy, don’t he?  But it’s no use now; we’re going slap into it, and the wind’s failing!”

It was true.  In the last few moments all that vast glistening surface of metallic blue which stretched so far to windward appeared to be slowly eaten away as if by some dull, corroding acid; the distant horizon line of sea and sky was still distinct and sharply cut, but the whole water between them had grown gray, as if some invisible shadow had passed in mid-air across it.  The actual fog bank had suddenly lost its resemblance to the shore, had lifted as a curtain, and now seemed suspended over the ship.  Gradually it descended; the top-gallant and top-sails were lost in this mysterious vapor, yet the horizon line still glimmered faintly.  Then another mist seemed to rise from the sea and meet it; in another instant the deck whereon they stood shrank to the appearance of a raft adrift in a faint gray sea.  With the complete obliteration of all circumambient space, the wind fell.  Their isolation was complete.